Hawkins, Jo: Anzac for sale

After the Gallipoli landing on 25 April 1915, the word Anzac began to appear with increasing frequency to brand a range of Australian consumer products, and many traders applied to change the name of their businesses to Anzac. On 25 May 1916, the federal government issued War Precautions Regulations prohibiting the unauthorised use of the word Anzac ‘in any trade, business, calling or profession’. This article explores applications to use the word Anzac for commercial purposes between 1915 and 1921 to argue that consumer culture became a battleground where individuals and groups competed to assert ownership over the word and the social currency it represented. (blurb)

The early commercialisation of Anzac may be compared with more recent examples, canvassed in, for example, Carolyn Holbrook’s remarks at the UNSW Canberra Summer School.

This number of Australian Historical Studies is a special edition introduced by Joan Beaumont (‘Remembering Australia’s First World War’), and including, besides Jo Hawkins, Mark Sheftall (‘Mythologising the Dominion fighting man: Australian and Canadian narratives of the First World War Soldier, 1914–39’), Rhys Crawley, (‘Marching to the beat of an imperial drum: contextualising Australia’s military effort during the First World War’), James Cotton, ‘William Morris Hughes, Empire and nationalism: the legacy of the First World War’), Joan Beaumont again (‘Australia’s global memory footprint: memorial building on the Western Front, 1916–2015′) and Margaret Hutchison, ‘Accurate to the point of mania’: eyewitness testimony and memory making in Australia’s official paintings of the First World War’ plus book reviews. Abstracts and previews are available from the link above; full text through institution subscriptions or (at considerable expense) to interested persons.